Matt's Model Boats

USS Spuyten Duyvil  was an iron-cased, semi-submersible and torpedo-laying warship that was built for the United States Navy. William Willis Wiley Wood and John Louis Lay, while under the supervision of Francis Hoyt Gregory, are reported to have designed the torpedo-ram as well as its weapons system. Attaching torpedoes to spars, conveying them to their target onboard a dedicated fighting vessel and detonating them against the hull of a target ship was first attempted by the Confederate States Navy. Picket-launches, which were armed with spar-mounted torpedoes and powered by steam-engines, represented the initial response of the United States Navy to the David -class torpedo-vessels that had been constructed for the Confederate States Navy.  USS Stromboli , as USS Spuyten Duyvil  was known at the beginning of its career, contained elements of ironclads and torpedo-boats in its design. Service with the James River Squadron, which was involved in the push towards Richmond, ...

Humber sloops, which are sometimes confused with Billy boys or Humber keels, were single-masted sailing barges that navigated the East Coast of England as well as the inland waterways of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Goole, Grimsby, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leeds and Wakefield were among the settlements that were  accessible to larger Humber sloops  while London was also visited by these trading vessels. Blakeney, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft are known to have been visited by Billy boys, Humber keels and Humber sloops. Norfolk and Suffolk, which formed the region of East Anglia, was home to a number of coastal settlements that would be visited by East Coast traders. Shipwrecks were not uncommon and life-boats were often sent to rescue mariners whose sloops had run aground on sandbanks, struck rocks or foundered in storms.  Richard  and  Three Brothers , which originated from Goole, are two examples of Humber sloops that were wrecked off the coast of East Anglia. I...

John Ericsson, who was a Swedish inventor, designed  a class of ten monitors  that were built for the United States Navy during the American Civil War. Turret ships, which were protected by iron plates, had been introduced in 1862 and USS Monitor was the name that was given to the first of these vessels. Ironclads that mounted their guns in rotating turrets, thereafter, were known as monitors. John Adolphus Dahlgren designed the smoothbore guns, which were 11-inches or 15-inches in diameter, that were housed in the turrets  Passaic -class monitors. Samuel Francis Du Pont, who was the first commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, received the first monitors of the Passaic -class at the beginning of 1863 and pitted them against Fort McAllister. Charleston, South Carolina, was the principle target of the Federal armada but Fort McAllister, on the Ogeechee River, allowed the new class of turret ships to test their ordnance in battle. It was on the Ogeechee Rive...

Napoleão João Baptista Level, who was assisted by Carlos Braconnot and Henrique Antonio Baptista, oversaw the construction of six monitors of the Pará-class during the Paraguayan War. Pará , Rio Grande , Alagoas , Piauby , Ceará and Santa Catharina were built at the Arsenal do Marinha de Rio de Janeiro. Level designed the monitors, which were constructed between the December of 1866 and the March of 1868, to operate on the system of waterways that connected with the Río de la Plata. Pará , Rio Grande and Alagoas were the first members of their class to join the Brazilian Squadron on the Paraguay River. The trio, which arrived at Curuzú between the December of 1867 and the February of 1868, joined the ironclad division at Port Elizario after they forced the battery of Curupayty. Commodore Francisco Cordeiro Torres Alvim commanded the First Division at Curuzú while the Second Division at Port Elizario, which was supplied by a tramway that ran through the Chaco, was commanded by Rear-a...